Economy Talk

"Almost $3.5tn combined" - how is that number even real?

The SpaceX–Tesla post says the two firms are worth almost $3.5 trillion combined, per China Daily HK carrying Bloomberg. And SpaceX made $4.4bn net income in a quarter, way above the $1.88bn analysts expected.

Ok but how do you value a company at trillions when the quarterly profit is a few billion? Is that normal? Is it hype? How do they even value SpaceX if it's mostly private-ish? I genuinely don't know how this works and I'd love a simple explanation.